Senate Unanimously Raises Legal Marriage Age to 18 in Landmark Amendment

Yesterday, the Senate unanimously passed a landmark amendment to the Marriage Act, raising the legal age for marriage to 18 years and removing provisions that allowed minors to marry with parental or guardian consent. Conversations about the bill began in the 2023 youth parliament, where youth expressed this as a main concern of theirs. Love News spoke with Minister of Human Development Delores Balderamos-Garcia about the importance of raising the age to protect children’s rights. 

Dolores Balderamos Garcia, Minister of Human Development: “Of course we give the kudos to the young people who had the Youth Parliament last year and that was the topic of the Youth Parliament, the passing of that legislation. So the fact that the young people could have spearheaded something that has turned out so good is extremely encouraging. I saw on the news last night the leader of government business, Senator Eamon Courtenay, he spoke excellently about it and also Senator Peyrefitte from the opposition and I was extremely happy and proud to hear that unanimously in both the House of Representatives and the Senate we have passed this legislation that marriage is not for anybody under 18. You must be an adult because it’s a contract, you see? Yes. Now, something has come up and that is the concern about the age of consent to sexual activity. Now that is 16. And you might say to yourself, there’s a discrepancy there but the way I see it, and I speak for myself, but I think others share the view. Changing the age of consent to sexual activity to 18 would be something that I don’t think we would be able to police it, you know? Naturally, we condemn and we decry older men taking young girls, sometimes not even in their teens yet, and that is totally wrong. However, when it comes to sexual activity, teenagers sometimes will experiment. You know, when somebody becomes sexually active of course we don’t encourage young people to get involved in sexual activity until they have the maturity to settle down, you know? But since marriage is a contract let us put it at 18 and I’m glad that we have done so.”

Despite the change in the Marriage Act, the age of consent will remain at 16.